Thread by @Joe_Mayes

Virus = paralysis of Brexit planning.

Industry meetings across Whitehall have been cancelled, and there's growing sense delay is inevitable 1/

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

“There’s absolutely no bandwidth for anything other than Covid-19,” said @BastidonPauline at the Freight Transport Association, who had 4 Brexit meetings cancelled in the second half of March.

“There’s no time, energy, money or interest at the moment to focus on Brexit.” 2/

Industry increasingly sees extension to the transition period as highly likely.

It's not about if, but how Johnson sells it to the public 3/

One theory is Johnson will wait until closer to June - the legal cut-off for seeking delay - and then announce strictly time-limited extension that matches amount of time lost to virus disruption 4/

Time matters because coronavirus-hit firms need to ready for trade barriers when leaving the EU's single market and customs union.

There's new customs paperwork and IT systems to install if things are to run smoothly on Jan 1. 2021 5/

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

The U.K. gov itself needs to build fresh infrastructure at ports to cope with new checks on UK-EU trade.

“Those were huge projects before the pandemic,” said @BobSanguinetti. “Day by day, it's increasingly difficult to see how the original time-lines can be achieved.” 6/

This is all while civil servants have been re-deployed en-masse to virus efforts.

“Brexit planning has fallen off a cliff,” said Peter Hardwick at the British Meat Processors Association. “All operational staff at DEFRA have been diverted to Covid-19 work.” 7/

So watch this space.

No reason for the government to say anything on Brexit for now, but as we get closer to the end of June... ends/